Methods and systems for managing composite data files

Abstract

Systems and methods for managing data, such as metadata or non-metadata such as content. In one exemplary method, a composite document is received and it is determined whether the composite document contains at least one subdocument and if it does, the method captures metadata and / or content from the subdocument and stores the captured metadata and / or content for use in future searches (or an immediate search). The metadata and / or content from the composite document is typically combined together with information about the hierarchy of the subdocuments in the document. The type of information in metadata for one type of file differs from the type of information in metadata for another type of file. Other methods are described and data processing systems and machine readable media are also described.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]Modern data processing systems, such as general purpose computer systems, allow the users of such systems to create composite data files which include a variety of different types of data formats. The information often has a composite nature, and the modern computer system allows the integration of these components into a composite data file. For example, a typical document contains text, generated from a text editing program or a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, and may also contain images, generated from an image processing program such as Adobe's PhotoShop program. The document can also contain an embedded document, thus creating an arbitrarily deep hierarchy of data storage. Other examples include a drawing or CAD document containing text objects, a video project containing multiple audio and video clips, an audio / video clip containing information about persons such as the copyright holders, an archive document containing multiple ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes methods for managing data in a data processing system. The methods involve capturing metadata and content from a composite document by successively capturing metadata from subdocuments within the document. The metadata can be stored in a database and the hierarchical information of the document can be maintained. The methods also allow users to selectively exclude non-relevant information and can use importer plug-ins to read embedded information. The patent also describes user interfaces for searching and presenting search results. The invention allows for proper management of metadata and non-metadata databases with linkage between documents and allows for concurrent or hierarchical searches. The patent also describes various data processing systems and machine-readable media that perform these methods.

Problems solved by technology

The arbitrarily deep level of information storage within a document can present a challenge to a typical user who is seeking to find particular information.

However, in existing systems, a user is not able to search for information deep within the document using one search request from the user.

Furthermore, existing systems can perform one search for data files, but this search does not also include searching through metadata for those files.

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